Dr who BBC eighth doctor 07 kursaal (v1 0) peter anghelides

Kursaal is a pleasure world, a huge theme park for the Cronus system
– or rather it will be if it isn’t destroyed during construction.
Eco-terrorists want the project halted to preserve vital archaeological
sites – areas containing the last remains of the long-dead Jax, an
ancient wolf-like race, whose remains are being buried beneath the
big-business tourist attractions.
Sam falls in with the environmentalists and finds her loyalties
divided. Meanwhile, the Doctor’s own investigations lead him to
believe the Jax are not extinct after all.
Cut off from the TARDIS, separated from his companion and pursued
for murder, the Doctor realises Kursaal hides a terrible secret – and
that Sam is being affected by events more than anyone would
guess. . .
This book is another in the series of adventures featuring the Eighth
Doctor and Sam.


KURSAAL
PETER ANGHELIDES


Published by BBC Books
An imprint of BBC worldwide Publishing
BBC Worldwide Ltd„ Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane
London W12 0TT
First published 1998
Copyright © Peter Anghelides
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Original series broadcast on the BBC
Format © BBC 1963

Doctor Who and TARDIS are trademarks of the BBC
ISBN 0 563 40578 3
Imaging by Black Sheep, copyright © BBC 1998
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham
Cover printed by Belmont Press Ltd, Northampton


For Anne Summerfield
Kursaal always love her



Contents
1: ‘There are no protected species on this planet’

1

2: ‘Kursaal security forces remain baffled’

13

3: ‘Sorry about the language’

23

4: ‘I’d value your opinion’

37

5: ‘Something here doesn’t smell right’

59

6: ‘Bad intelligence’

77

7: ‘I thought I’d lost her’

95

8: ‘Manipulation skills are jolly useful’

107

9: ‘I thought you were the expert’

121

10: ‘No deals, Doctor’

139

11: ‘The commander will see you now’

161

12: ‘Show me where you are’

175

13: ‘Sometimes the obvious is staring right at you’

189

14: ‘Not the kind you want to consort with’

205

15: ‘She’s already dead’

229


16: ‘Give me the moonlight’

245

Acknowledgements

255

Epilogue

257


1
‘There are no protected species on this planet’
Amy Saraband casually dropped the final few marble bricks behind

her on the tunnel floor, where they lay like pulled teeth. Then she
holstered her small handpick, and squeezed through the freshly made
hole into the faint phosphorescence beyond. And gaped at what she
saw.
Breathe, she told herself. Steady, regular breaths. Remember your
emergency training. Don’t hyperventilate. The slamming sound that
her heart made beneath her excavation clothing mocked her attempt
to stay calm. Breathe. Breathe!
It was a huge domed cathedral, hundreds of metres across, and
another hundred metres tall. She was astonished to think it was completely buried. But then she thought of how far they had travelled into
the angled escarpment. She thought of how Gray Corp’s terraforming bulldozers had blindly gouged thousands of tonnes of earth from
the mountainside, unexpectedly uncovering the entrance to the tunnel network. And how she had set up the expedition in a crazy rush
within just thirty-six hours afterwards.
All she could do was stare at the cathedral. How could they possibly
complete the work in the remaining twenty-four hours? Surely the
dozers had to stop now.
After the gloom of the excavation tunnels, lit only by the piercing
white shafts of light from her torch, the soft glow of the illumination
here should have been relaxing. But she could still feel her heart
hammering.
A distinctive, animal smell caught her throat. Her cough echoed
sharply from the walls all around her. Amy raised her head to take a

1


cleansing breath. High above, a broad, dark line stood out against the
bright, white, marble walls. It could be a high walkway, she thought,
perhaps some kind of ambulatory. Below it, huge geometrical outlines
and glyphs were interspersed with bas-reliefs of fierce animal shapes

and dancing humanoid figures. Amy twisted a complete circle as she
examined them, and then returned her gaze to the smooth white floor,
which was covered in a patina of long-undisturbed dust. Beneath this
even covering she could make out an arc of round, shallow indentations, a curving line which ran across the entire floor area. And at its
centre, lit by a thin shaft of bright light, was the chamber’s focal point.
The sculpture sat half a metre from the floor on a narrow black
plinth. It looked like a huge crystal crown, or perhaps the crenellations of a model castle. The crystal diffused the narrow column of
light, scattering it. Amy could see a circular recess to either side,
looking like two flawless crystal bowls scooped out of the sculpture.
Fitted in the bottom of the right-hand bowl was a large medallion or
talisman. The left-hand bowl contained a circular indentation of the
same size, suggesting a missing pair.
Amy picked up the talisman. It was the size of her palm, and in a
curve across one side a row of thirteen sparkling stones was embedded, a glittering arc catching the light. She grinned with delight, and
peered up into the column of light. High, high up through the ceiling, at the top of a long, smooth rock shaft, she could see the waxing
moon.
Amy was still grinning as she thumbed the comms link on her wrist.
She could imagine Olivier’s reaction when he arrived. Usually the
most emotion he’d ever betray was to cock his head dog-quizzically
on one side, staring intently as he silently took something in. This
was going to make his jaw hit the tunnel floor.
‘Gray speaking.’
Amy’s grin sank into her thick boots again as the gruff nasal voice
crackled out of the comms link and echoed around the room. ‘I was
hoping for Olivier,’ she said.
The speaker snorted at her. ‘Nice to talk to you too, Professor Saraband.’

2

Damn the man. One sentence, and she was already ill at ease. In the
past fifteen years, Amy had co-ordinated twelve digs; she had led nine,
and picked her team personally for eight of those. Maximilian Gray
was the unwelcome member of this latest expedition. Amy mouthed
a silent obscenity at the speaker. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Gray,’ she said calmly.
‘I wanted to discuss our next move with Olivier.’
‘You already seem to have made the next move.’ Gray’s pedantic
tones echoed loudly around the cathedral, startling her. Amy turned
to see him squeezing through the hole in the wall. He was sniffing
the air with faint distaste, obviously detecting the rank animal smell.
Wispy tufts of hair on his otherwise bald head stuck out at an angle,
and his old, pale face was flushed with the exertion of his journey
from the team campsite, where she thought she had left him. It made
him look, incongruously, like a pink, wrinkled, newborn baby.
Gray emerged wheezing from the gap. ‘Olivier was heading back
towards the surface,’ he panted. ‘I think he has been worrying about
a big storm brewing. As climate control is not yet online, he was concerned that a flash flood in this area could pour down these tunnels
and drown us while we sleep.’
Amy sucked air through her teeth. ‘Well, I guess he’s the expert.
That’s why I pay him so much.’
‘I pay him, Professor Saraband. And in his enforced absence, perhaps you could discuss your question with me. Then I may feel I am
getting my money’s worth out of your expedition.’
Amy ignored the gibe. ‘How did you find me?’
Gray held out his arm as though he wanted her to kiss his limp
hand. Then he tapped his wrist. ‘The comms link, of course.’ Now
he was gesturing to the one she was wearing, and she saw that its
display screen showed two red spots separated from five others. ‘I
am sure you are most pleased that I prised these devices out of Gray
Corporation Labs for this expedition.’
‘Your technology is wonderful, Mr Gray. And our own archaeological tools. . . ’

‘Yes yes yes,’ said Gray impatiently as he brushed mud off the shoulders and front of his jumpsuit with one thin, gloved hand. ‘They are a

3


bit pointless if you all get lost, are they not? Now down here, so deep
underground, the planetary sat-link is useless. These little charmers
use a submedia carrier, whatever that is, which ensures we are never
out of contact over a direct line of three to five kilometres.’ He seemed
to be struggling with the dust, because at this point he pulled out a
handkerchief and cleared his throat noisily. The chamber echoed the
sound, growling back at them. ‘Well, that is what the lab team put on
the funding request.’
‘You have an accountant’s mind, Mr Gray,’ said Amy lightly.
‘You are very kind, Professor Saraband,’ snuffled Gray, carefully wiping his long, pointed nose. Amy noticed that, even in the light from
the sculpture, his eyes were blank and grey. Then he plucked the
talisman from her fingers, and hefted it in his palm.
‘There would have been two,’ said Amy. ‘The glyphs on the plinth
below suggest some kind of pairing. . . perhaps male and female. Certainly the long skylight above us which reaches to the surface suggests
that important opposites for this culture are light and dark.’
‘Life and death, perhaps? This place does look like a catacomb.’
Gray turned the talisman over in his fingers thoughtfully. ‘I wonder
what happened to the other one of these.’ He moved off with a scuffing gait, swirling dust around him in the low light. When he reached
the nearest wall, he started to examine the glyphs there.
‘Are you going to catalogue that talisman, or just pocket it?’ Amy
said.
Gray half turned his head, and she could see him smiling in the
reflected torchlight, unabashed. ‘Well, I am funding this expedition,
am I not?’ He turned away from her again. ‘I do wonder, Professor
Saraband, if you have forgotten that we have only one more day to

complete this excavation before the Kursaal excavators move in and
demolish it. Now that you have uncovered this remarkable find, let us
be bold. If you insist on photorecording our every step before scraping
away the dust with a teaspoon, we will only scratch the surface.’
Amy felt her face flush with anger. ‘I’m an archaeologist, Mr Gray,’
she said tartly. ‘We try not to scratch surfaces. Unlike your company’s
excavators, which will destroy this location.’

4


‘My company’s bulldozers uncovered this location. They pull a
tonne of earth up with every scoop. You would never have found
these tunnels by digging with your teaspoons.’
‘And now we need more time.’
‘Your colleagues seem much less enthusiastic about staying, especially with that storm brewing. Or perhaps they are just worried
about those dreadful InterPlanetary Media murders.’ Gray clucked
his tongue, and the echo made it sound like water dripping from the
roof. ‘Who knows what HALF are capable of these days.’
Amy fumed, staring at the back of Gray’s bald head and wondering
if her pick would crack it like an egg. ‘That’s ridiculous, and you
know it. This is precisely the sort of thing the HALF people are trying
to preserve. They wouldn’t try to stop us – they’d want to encourage
us.’
She could see Gray’s thin shoulders jiggle up and down, and was
annoyed when she heard in his tone that he was laughing quietly,
‘I wish you were correct, Professor Saraband. But I rather think that
HALF is more interested in commercial disruption than archaeological
preservation. They don’t want my company to redevelop this planet,
and it is clearly in their paymasters’ interests to prevent Kursaal from

ever opening.’ He spoke quietly and quickly, as though these were
words he had rehearsed many times. Amy remembered hearing him
say the same thing on InterPlanetary Media news three nights before.
Amy sighed. ‘My team aren’t worried about HALF or about the
weather, Me Gray. We are self-sufficient.’ She reached her right arm
around in front of him to make a point with her comms link. ‘We
don’t rely on clear skies and satellite access and not being deep underground, because of your wonderful technobabble devices.’ She
looked more closely at the comms link on her wrist. The other group
showed only as four lights now. Oh. So much for new technology, she
thought bitterly.
When she looked up at Gray again, he was favouring her with his
ingratiating smile. ‘I am glad you have earned the respect of your
team, Professor. I am trying to display control and confidence with
them, but I feel it is coming across as just bossy. What do you think?’

5


‘You’d earn their respect if you allowed them to do their job. Which
is protecting these ancient artefacts from your bulldozers. Doesn’t
this cavern move you? Listen to your heart, if you can hear it over
the sound of jingling coins. Don’t you want to preserve this area of
Saturnia Regna, instead of destroying it with a theme park?’
Her words bounced around the room, a repeated challenge. Gray’s
tone was unchanged. ‘Kursaal’s backers agreed the project plan years
ago, and that was after several previous years of haggling.’ He noticed
he had got mud on his sleeve, and brushed it away along with her
objections. ‘You can hardly expect me to renegotiate the specifications
at this stage.’
‘What kind of thinking is that?’ she raged. The words tumbled out

of her, and collided with the echoes in the chamber as she ploughed
into him with her accusations. ‘This is obviously an even bigger discovery than sulphur mines on Jagrat. It’s huge. Literally. Can’t you
see that?’
‘It is a matter of priorities.’
‘Don’t you wonder what this place is? Who built it? What happened
to them? They were obviously an advanced life form. . . ’
‘Who are no longer here.’
Amy snorted. ‘Maybe HALF have got some things right. Mr Gray,
there could be anywhere between five and fifty million species of creatures on Saturnia Regna, this planet that you want to treat like a kid’s
sandpit. Most of them will be wiped out even before they’re found.
And now here are artefacts from an ancient race that’s already extinct, and you think I can tidy it up into a press release for you in four
days so that your hired hoodlums can bury it under a five-star hotel. I
mean, what does it take to get protected-species status round here?’
‘There are no protected species on this planet,’ said Gray, smiling
his infuriating, calm smile again, saying those unreasonable things in
his quiet, reasonable voice. ‘Like this talisman, Professor Saraband,
the planet belongs to my company. I have free and unrestricted right
to grant the use of any feature on Saturnia Regna, including natural,
structural, or animal, to any third-party franchise for any purpose.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Amy persisted. ‘These creatures –’

6


‘I will treat them as I wish,’ said Gray firmly, turning the looted
talisman over in his hand. ‘They are only animals. You may as well
ask me to put my poodle before my profit margin.’ He sniffed, and
pulled out his handkerchief again.
‘Are you allergic to animal fur?’ Amy said.
Gray was slipping the talisman into a transparent pouch on the

breast of his suit. ‘Yes, how would you know that?’
Amy picked at a piece of dirt from the back of Gray’s jumpsuit where
his earlier cleanup had missed. Trapped in the dirt between her finger
and thumb were a number of fine brown hairs. ‘Animal fur? I wonder
if it was an animal that started that hole that we climbed through.’
She trotted over to the ragged hole in the far wall.
Gray’s angular features folded into a frown. ‘What sort of animal?’
Amy ran her fingers over scratches in the marble brickwork to one
side of the hole. ‘A protected species, I hope.’
A howl of terror, abject, uncontrolled, came from beyond the jagged
hole. They both jumped back instinctively. Amy saw Gray stare at his
wrist, and for a mad moment she wondered if he was checking the
time. Then she remembered, and looked at her own comms link. Two
red lights indicated Gray and herself, but she could see only three
others beyond them, close by. She clucked with annoyance. ‘Your
technology has given up,’ she said to Gray.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said in a whisper, and angled his arm towards
her. His comms link showed the same. Then one of the other three
red lights went out.
Another anguished scream, starting high-pitched, became a man’s
hoarse, bellowed plea.’ No. No.’ There was a further gurgling cry, and
silence.
Amy looked around herself, panicked. She saw with a jolt that Gray
had pulled a squat gun from the hip pocket of his jumpsuit. ‘They’re
close,’ he said, and slid head first into the hole.
Amy slipped through after him. After the soft illumination in the
cathedral, she struggled to adjust to the gloom of the tunnel. She
wanted only to concentrate on her torchlight, so she pointed it down
and stared across at the dark wall, willing her eyes to focus. She

7


switched on one of the floodlights she had placed earlier, and the
rough rocks and earth of the tunnel walls seemed to press in on them
both. She was about to speak, but Gray silenced her by taking her
arm in the grip of one bony hand. ‘Listen.’
She could hear a scrabbling sound from the direction of the team
campsite. She glanced at her comms link. The lights pricked the
darkness like two pairs of red eyes. At the first corner, ten metres
ahead of them, a jumbled figure lurched into view. Amy flashed up
her torch beam, and Gray raised his gun sharply.
The figure gave a short cry of despair as it was caught in the harsh
light, and then its shoulders slumped in a sort of relief. Gray flicked
his gun to the tunnel roof with a grunt.
Amy stared in disbelief at the dishevelled figure in the torchlight. It
was Osram, his eyes staring and wide, his face caked with sweat and
dirt and blood. He was half slumped against the tunnel wall, grabbing
down ragged lumps of air with every breath. ‘Run. . . coming. . . ’ he
managed to gasp.
But then his feet seemed to flick backward beneath him, while at the
same time he lunged forward, grasping desperately for purchase on
the stony tunnel floor and giving a despairing little cry before his head
connected with the ground. His right hand had managed to grasp
one of Amy’s floodlights, which, as it toppled over, briefly illuminated
the bend in the tunnel. Amy dropped her torch with shock. The
unconscious Osram was being dragged back around the corner. Then
she could only hear his body scraping along the tunnel floor in the
darkness.
They snatched up the fallen torch, and followed. Fifty metres further on, they found Leet. They knew who it was only by the name

label on his shredded jumpsuit. The torchlight threw bizarre shadows
across the body, but in the centre of the beam they could see fresh,
bright blood, still drizzling out from the huge gash which ran from
his sternum up across his neck and face. Leer’s long brown curls were
matted with blood where they tumbled on to the tunnel floor. Amy
felt the whole weight of her own body as she slumped down beside
the corpse. She realised then that she had been biting her tongue hard

8


enough to draw blood.
‘Hurry up,’ said Gray. He wasn’t looking at Leet’s body any more,
and started to make his way further down the tunnel, tapping his
wrist. ‘Osram is not dead – his comms link is still broadcasting his life
signs. They seem to want to take his body, at any rate.’
‘They?’ mumbled Amy. Her numb tongue lay like a slab in her
mouth.
‘Our HALF friends.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It can’t be.’
Gray checked his gun again, and moved forward carefully towards
the next bend in the tunnel.
They rounded the gradual curve to the expedition base site, and the
powerful camp illumination grew stronger as they drew close. Amy’s
stomach tightened. The rank smell of animal was stronger here.
They entered slowly, cautiously. Amy remembered when the team
had first discovered this wide, high cavern at the junction of three
tunnels. It was about three metres high and twenty metres across
in a rough circle, with a gentle slope towards the back. Sharstone
had declared it to be a natural place to establish base site, and had

swiftly co-ordinated them into teams to set up their many pieces of
equipment. After their unsuccessful first-day forays into the darkest
and dampest of the tunnels, the cavern had felt like a welcome haven.
She looked about warily. The equipment was scattered over the
whole area. To one side, Olivier’s photorecording equipment had been
dashed into useless fragments against the rocky wall. Two of the three
powerful lamps had been toppled over and smashed on the groundsheet, so all the light in the area was from one direction, casting huge
and frightening shadows over the opposite walls. Amy found their
communications unit overturned, though it appeared otherwise undamaged. Her relief was short-lived: she could see the bodies beyond
it.
Olivier lay face down on the groundsheet in a sticky puddle of his
own blood. There was so much of it that at first she hadn’t realised
it was not just the shadow thrown along the slope of the floor by his
body. Clutched in his outstretched fist was a tube of protein substi-

9


tute, the contents squirted onto the groundsheet in a convulsive last
gesture.
Sharstone’s body lay on its back, the eyes and mouth wide with
disbelief. It seemed that she too had been attacked while she was
eating. The smooth dark skin of her young face was unmarked, but
there were three deep, savage slashes through her jumpsuit and across
her chest and abdomen. Amy looked away, not wanting to see the
glistening entrails spilling over Sharstone’s legs. She could taste her
own blood, and she wiped a dribble from the corner of her mouth.
Her tongue still hurt like hell.
‘They have taken this tunnel,’ Gray called to her from the other wide
of the cavern. He was gesturing with his gun to a trail on the ground.

‘Why would they kill the others, yet keep Osram alive?’
Amy looked around. ‘Where’s Aykers?’
Gray jutted his thin head towards the third tunnel. ‘Back there,’
he said. ‘His head has been almost severed from his body. It is not
pleasant.’
Amy made the communications panel upright again, plugging the
speaker jack into the base unit with her shaking fingers. On the third
attempt, the jack slid home, and the hissing sound of low static filled
the cavern. For a moment she panicked, then she twisted the control
until the unit was retuned. The hiss vanished, but she could now hear
a low growling. The new sound was coming from the first tunnel, the
one that led back to the surface.
Just as she looked up, a low dark shape sprang from the tunnel.
Gray was stooped over Sharstone’s body, and the attack took him by
surprise, knocking him into the freestanding floodlight. It rocked,
then tumbled, a wash of sharp illumination spilling crazily across the
room for a moment until the light stand jammed against the lowest
part of the ceiling. Gray snarled, but was thrown down by the creature, his gun clattering to the floor.
Amy froze where she was for a long moment. In the angled light
from the flood, she could make out a metre-long creature standing
over Gray’s supine form. Amy could see that Gray’s gun had spun just
out of his reach. He was staring up with an unaccustomed wild light

10


in his grey eyes, his thin mouth quivering with fear. Amy could see
that the creature looked like a huge dog, and its patchy grey-brown
pelt seemed to be bristling as the animal stared down at its prey. It
looked emaciated, old, but still obviously powerful. For some reason,

it had paused, staring at Gray’s breast pocket, and then at his long,
gaunt face. Amy screamed.
The animal’s head snapped in her direction. Its pointed ears flicked
back on its head, and the top lip’ peeled back from its whiskery snout
to reveal sharp white teeth covered in flecks of fresh blood. Amy
screamed again, and the animal leapt towards her with a frightening
speed over the scattered boxes of provisions.
She struggled up, but had only half risen before the creature’s
scrawny front legs powered against her midriff. In the half-light she
glimpsed sharp teeth snapping at her face, a mass of stringy fur, and
green, green eyes full of savage hatred. As she fell, she dropped to
her right, trying to cover her face with her arms. She had a glimpse of
something hung around the creature’s neck – a motif, circular, maybe
the size of her palm, glittering in the half-light. Then she heard the
sharp report of two gunshots, and the animal dropped heavily on top
of her, then rolled. She twisted awkwardly, and felt a jarring, agonising pain in her right arm.
Gray had struggled up onto one elbow, and had loosed off the two
shots at the creature. One had caught it in the leg, causing it to fall
on Amy, but now the creature was rounding Gray again, stalking him
cautiously behind the discarded boxes. Gray fired another shot wide,
and as he handled the recoil the creature leapt at him again, scrabbling against his legs and chest with its front claws and reaching for
the soft flesh of his neck.
Amy had managed to grasp the communicator microphone. Pain
from her arm washed over her in a crashing wave of nausea. She
watched in horror as Gray struggled with the animal. Then the creature’s body jerked three times as Gray’s gun fired again. The animal
let out a siren howl which reverberated around the chamber. Then
it lowered its head, licked Gray’s face from chin to forehead with its
long dark tongue, and rolled heavily off him and onto the ground-

11

sheet. Gray lay unconscious, his eyes closed, his breathing irregular.
Amy whimpered quietly, hardly daring to hope that the animal was
dead. The pain was reaching a crescendo in her head, like a mad
orchestra’s overture. She closed her eyes, and the light through her
lids slowly faded from white to red. She thought that she managed to
whisper a mayday into the microphone before they went black.

12


2
‘Kursaal security forces remain baffled’
Kadijk didn’t look at the waiter when he handed back the menu.
‘Whack off its horns, wipe its butt, and stick it on a plate.’
‘Rare, sir?’
‘Like a Sin City virgin,’ said Kadijk, waving him away with the back
of his hand.
Captain Paul Kadijk knew the impression that his short, thick form
gave. He wore his shirts and his eyebrows knitted. He stared conversationalists down with his steady dark eyes. He hated wearing
his official uniform, but he was head of planetary security and could
make the rules for himself. So he wore a loose jumble of faded old
clothes – today, a crumpled suit of pale linen. He frightened people,
and that was just fine. He had frightened his two children, so his
wife had said. Well, pre-teens need to respect their elders. Maybe the
pubescent jerk serving today had missed that lesson when he was a
youngster. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have insisted that Kadijk wear a tie
in the restaurant. Hell, until Kursaal Phase One was complete in six
months, this eatery wasn’t even officially open.

Kadijk shoved his place setting aside with a noisy clatter, and spread
out the pile of case notes on the small round table. He’d intimidated
the staff into allowing him a seat with a view, even though he planned
to spend the whole meal reading. So he sat with his back to the
panoramic window, twenty floors up, which showed a real-time view
of the cityplex. He wanted to study the staff and the other clientele
while annoying the snotty maitre d’hotel, who had grudgingly allowed
him the privileged table. Behind him, the tower blocks and service
areas of the city spiked up into the black atmosphere in which pendulous storm clouds were gathering on the far right. The Gray Corp

13


HQ squatted to the left, taller and broader than the other needle-thin
buildings it had spawned in the first phase of development. After that,
the first of the tourist accommodation lay half finished and heavily
guarded. And farthest out, the massive fires of distant work crews
flared on the horizon as the day-round development teams chased the
sun.
The first notes Kadijk read were about a recent murder subject, possible victim of a drugs ring in the cityplex. Dull, one for the grunts.
The next was the report he’d commissioned about allegations that
drug runners had infiltrated his newest police division. He skipped
through the details, marking review comments with an old-fashioned
stylus; his idiot junior could scan them in later – he was damned if
he would rely on the notesheet technology not to throw up all his
annotations when the power fluctuated again. And on the subject of
throwing up, here was his meal. The sauce looked as heavy as his
caseload.
‘Bring me the news,’ he snapped at the waiter. The youngster wordlessly brought him a datacube, and set it on the far side of the small
table. Kadijk flicked it to the InterPlanetary Media newsfeed, then

dabbed at his new tie with a napkin.
The picture in the cube buzzed into life. The reception here was terrible, but maybe the satellite was on the way out again so the offworld
channel databases weren’t easily accessible. And he was looking at the
wrong view of the scene, since the news reporter seemed to have decided that she would look away from him. Nice bum, he thought, and
then swivelled the cube so that she was facing him.
‘. . . direct-action campaign against Gray Corporation,’ Nice Bum
was saying. ‘The pressure group Helping All Life Forms, or HALF,
has successfully disrupted work on the Gray-owned planet Saturnia
Regna for nearly three years. Gray Corp heads a consortium of major Cronus financial houses which wants to convert Saturnia Regna
into Kursaal, a Class Two leisure world. Gray owned the planet for
more than a decade before HALF first appeared. This latest action is
the sixth attack in two months. Kursaal security forces remain baffled
about how to combat, or even find. . . ’

14


Kadijk spat a large wodge of steak back onto his plate, and shouted
an oath at the datacube. Restaurant staff murmured at a distance.
Kadijk lowered the volume on the newsfeed, and rewound it.
Nice Bum continued: ‘. . . in two months. Kursaal security forces
remain baffled’ (Kadijk snorted again) ‘about how to combat, or even
find, the environmental group. HALF are believed LO be led by the
hardline activist Bernard Cockaigne.’ (A photomontage of a hardfaced bruiser with deep-set eyes and a broken nose.) ‘Gray Corp insist
that HALF are a cover for a rival business consortium who want to see
Kursaal fail, and that a shadowy billionaire is funding their on-planet
activities.’
An image of Maximilian Gray appeared next to Nice Bum, who explained that Gray had reiterated the accusations only a week before
this incident, but declined to name the other companies involved. ‘I
rather think,’ he was saying, ‘that HALF is more interested in commercial disruption than archaeological preservation. They do not want my

company to redevelop this planet, and it is clearly in their paymasters’
interests to prevent Kursaal from ever opening. In addition to Captain
Kadijk, I have recently hired many more security staff. We will stamp
out these terrorists, and Kursaal will open on schedule in three years’
time.’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Kadijk, mopping gravy from his new tie. ‘All your
new crack troops, boss.’
‘I’m Martina Lennox for InterPlanetary Media Crime Report. Next
time, an exclusive report from our news team who are on site at the
Kursaal complex.’
Kadijk chewed on an overlarge slice of steak. ‘That’s what you
thought, darling.’ He rewound the report again, and paused it in
the middle, and zoomed in for a close-up of Martina. ‘What a waste,’
he said, swallowing. Then he started thinking about the report some
more, and that’s when he choked on his drink.
Shortly after, as he dabbed at the spirit stain on his lapel, he tried
to wave away the thin youngster in the waiter’s uniform who had
appeared discreetly at his shoulder. ‘I don’t need help. I was just a bit
surprised by something, that’s all. Push off, there’s a good lad.’

15


‘You have a guest, Captain,’ said the youngster, his polite inflection
unchanged.
Kadijk was about to roast the waiter rather more than his steak
had been when he spotted a familiar, dreary figure standing next
to the maitre d’hotel. He had the yellow hair and blue skin typical
of all Fodorans. ‘Send Sergeant Zaterday over straight away,’ Kadijk
snapped.

The tall blond newcomer scurried across at the waiter’s curt nod.
‘This had better be important, Zaterday,’ Kadijk said between chomping. He gave the young policeman one of his dark stares. But Zaterday
was two metres tall, and stood picking nervously at a spot on his triangular jawline, so he didn’t seem to notice.
‘Sir, there’s been another attack,’ said Zaterday in his irritating high
nasal whine. ‘This time it was at Mr Gray’s archaeological event.’
‘When?’
‘Call came in half an hour ago.’
‘What the hell kept you?’ Kadijk was on his feet. ‘Jeez, I warned
Gray that a scout trip to go digging bones was inviting trouble. If he
has to play the PR game, why can’t he sponsor the ZooPark instead of
arsing around with that crazy xenophobe?’
‘Xenobiologist, Captain,’ said Zaterday.
Kadijk hated it when they did that. But it was typical of the overprecise grammar of a Fodoran who wasn’t speaking his first language
– or his third, come to that.
‘Whatever,’ snapped Kadijk as he bundled his notes into his case,
and forked up one further mouthful. He turned back as though he had
forgotten something, seized his drink, and loped across the restaurant
like a grumpy gorilla. ‘You give me indigestion, Zaterday.’
‘You can eat here later, Captain,’ said Zaterday as he strolled after
his superior towards the exit. ‘They have 24-hour service.’
‘Who’s gonna wait that long for their food to arrive?’ Kadijk said,
stepping onto the exit escalator. He seized a sheet of paper from the
sheaf that protruded from his briefcase, and pushed it against Zaterday’s chest. ‘When you’re back in the office, you can tell Garrick that
we’ve received the path lab report on the blood found at his scene of

16


crime. Tell him we’ve got good news and bad news for him. And the
bad news is that the results show it’s his blood on the victim and all

round the murder scene.’
‘And the good news?’
‘Tell him that his cholesterol count is low.’
The vehicle park was halfway up the FoodBlock building, and had
not been completed. Kadijk half wondered whether he should hold
Zaterday’s thin blue hand, in case the young Fodoran wandered off
the unmarked edge and fell to the unfinished pavement thirty storeys
below.
Zaterday continued his cheerfully inane explanation of the services
available in the FoodBlock that housed the restaurant.
‘You talk too much, Zaterday,’ interrupted Kadijk. ‘You can learn
a lot just by listening, especially when you’re interviewing a suspect.
You get them to fill those uncomfortable silences with their own voice.
And you’ll find they will volunteer information despite themselves.’
Except, he reflected ruefully, that was what Zaterday was doing –
filling the awkward gaps in their non-conversation to avoid embarrassment. He had all the earnest enthusiasm of any newcomer to
Kursaal, each of whom had eaten up the Gray Corp introduction to
the planet and politely regurgitated it verbatim to newcomers.
But Kadijk was no newcomer. When Gray Corp had decided to beef
up its on-site security team, it had interviewed forty candidates from
all over the Cronus system. Paul Kadijk was freshly available, and was
the only person who turned up to the interview on the Gray SpaceStation in casual clothes. Gray had interviewed them all personally,
and the appointment of a ten-year company security man with mixed
recent success was considered eccentric by some shareholders.
Yet since his arrival, Kadijk had achieved some success in reducing HALF activity on Kursaal. The newsfeeds said he was a lateral
thinker. His staff said he was a tyrant who demanded the impossible
and achieved it through fear. His wife thought she was better off without him. ‘Go and marry bloody Gray, why don’t you?’ she’d said with
cold deliberation on the day she left him. ‘You see more of him than

17